PhD defense Julia Bongiorno

This dissertation is a multidimensional analysis of Dublin English in its sociolinguistic, phonetic and phonological aspects and has two major objectives: the detailed description of the intonational system of Dublin English (and the evaluation of the influence of some sociological criteria) and the in-depth study of the stylistic rises that can be found at the end of declarative sentences. These so-called HRTs (High Rising Terminals) or uptalk contours are used for various pragmatic purposes (such as seeking validation or ensuring that the speaker is following the conversation) and are present in many varieties of English. They have the particularity of carrying different functions and forms depending on the variety in which they are found. With an authentic corpus of 31 speakers recorded in the framework of the PAC programme (Phonology of Contemporary English, Durand & Przewozny-Desriaux, 2011) and the PAC Prosody protocol developed for this work, we demonstrate that Dublin has its own intonational system which is more static than that of Standard British English. We then show how several criteria such as gender and the proficiency in Irish can sometimes explain the variation encountered in Dublin. We then proceed to an in-depth study of HRTs in the city, showing that women make more of them and that these HRTs are distinguished from interrogative and continuative rises mainly by the increase in the fundamental frequency curve and by pragmatic features. Finally, we discuss how these rises and the speakers who produce them are perceived in Ireland.